Newly-mined lead is not radioactive due to the sun or cosmogenic sources, but because of isotopes of lead which are produced from decays of uranium and thorium (which already existed from the supernova remnants that formed our current solar system) --- see here. So, you don't want lead that you've just mined from millions of years deep underground --- that stuff is still pretty hot. What you want is stuff that was mined by the Romans two millenia ago, separated from the underground crud full of uranium/thorium, and left to cool off since then.

Just about every kind of rock has background radiation of its own, which must be dealt with (some more than others). However, radiation from rocks is typically easier to deal with than cosmic rays from space --- it's lower energy stuff that can be blocked by a few extra layers of extra lead/copper shielding (carefully screened for even lower radioactivity), instead of energetic particles that go through hundreds of meters of material unhindered. You have to worry about things like radon (radioactive gas) seeping out of the rocks and getting into the equipment; but, these are known effects to watch out for deal with by proper ventilation/sealing.

We can make estimates of the amount of dust out there based on the light we see from distant stars. Where there is dust, it will scatter light passing through it (and modify the spectrum). There are lots of open questions about how much and what kind of dust is out there --- this isn't a "solved" problem --- however, best estimates plus known uncertainties don't put this within range of explaining dark matter. So, we still need dark matter to "make the math work out."

What collider experiments do look for is "missing mass" --- if the amount of stuff coming out doesn't add up to the stuff going in, minus known detector inefficiencies (indicating some new "invisible" particle being produced). So, people are looking for dark matter production --- anything that results in mass/energy being converted to unknown/undetectable forms --- in a systematic manner. You may not specifically be looking for "spacetime foam," but anything that doesn't mimic "ordinary" particles in firing detectors (thus would already be visible in existing DM searches) in sufficient quantities will be found.

Who assumes matter-antimatter collisions are "nullfiications"? They don't produce "nothing," but spit out particles with the "combined" properties of the inputs --- i.e, back-to-back photons carrying the energy and momentum of the initial particle/anti-particle pair. Also, if DM is some localized warpage in space-time, why does it appear gravitationally bound to visible masses (i.e. accumulating in galactic halos)? Space-time wiggles (like gravity waves) don't behave that way in known theories. unless you're just stringing together random words with no meaning to sound smart.

We just had a story about "people doing something on a computer" last week. Not much has changed about the existence of computers since last week. No need to post articles bothering with the trivial details between one computer system and another --- it's all the same, once you've seen one. Only alert me when something new happens in the world.

Personally, I'd consider the best defense to include the communal societal infrastructure to prevent death-squads commanded by the ultra-rich from roaming the streets, rather than individual approaches like a gun under my pillow and hoping I can shoot faster than a hired goon squad. I'd greatly prefer the freedom to not constantly worry about being gunned down to the freedom to maintain an effective personal arsenal (which might not turn out to be as good as the personal arsenal commanded by a hostile oligarch).

We're talking about that one decimal place before the decimal point: current observations indicate more than five times as much dark matter as known matter. It's not just a little bit of round-off error in how much dust there is between stars, but apparently most of the stuff in the universe (at least, before you get to "dark energy," which is "twice as big" again, but far more poorly understood).

Who said all cars would be driverless? More likely, drivered cars will go the way of the horse-ful carriage: a specialty item for enthusiasts off the major highways. And, why do you assume there's anything that will limit driverless cars to the 0.01%? In mass-production mode, there's nothing overly expensive needed for a driverless car --- a few cameras and scanners (which are mainly pricey now due to low production, rather than fundamental materials/manufacturing barriers), plus some clever software (which has zero marginal cost to reproduce). If you can fit enough computers in a car today to drive it, then you'll have enough computers in every telephone in another decade or two (the timescale needed for legislative updates plus people replacing old cars).

So, the horseless carriage was never invented, because the motor is the horse? Rather, "driver" has, in common meaning, indicated the person controlling the car; and, if you see a car coming down the street towards you without a person at the wheel, you think "holy shit, that car has no driver!" (just like someone might have thought "holy shit, that carriage has no horse!").

In this case, you don't need a honking horn, just, e.g., an audible engine-like rumble when cars are approaching intersections. I assume (hope) you don't lean on the horn every time you see a pedestrian at the corner. And, if a blind person is crossing, you should never have a need to honk --- you should have brought your car to a stop at the intersection and given pedestrians their right of way (not be caught unawares blasting through a stopsign). Self-driving cars will probably, on average, do a lot better job of this than humans.

I agree on the general principle of "just because fancy tech happened before doesn't mean every wishful idea will be achieved" (e.g. faster-than-light travel) --- but self-driving cars aren't an exotic future possibility outside the present domain of human knowledge. They're working prototypes cruising around today, and doing a pretty good job of it. At this point, there's a big burden of proof to establish why they won't become common, rather than whether they might be possible in theory.

Apologies if poking fun at the motivations for private space exploration annoys people like yourself lacking in "prestige" due to having a small "space program."

Correction: they're going to spend $36M of other people's money to win a $30M prize for themselves. You don't think the rocket scientists running this are footing the bill themselves, do you? Or that a lot of the money they're spending is going to strangers? If you want to question the financial wisdom of this venture, you might want to look at the people doing more of the paying and less of the getting paid side of the equation. That said, many space ventures have been more about dick waving than financial or scientific return on investment; and a $36M space dick is a really cheap space dick by most comparisons (especially for one that reaches the moon).

You're also missing some history --- you do realize that the 1949 borders are not generally the territory under dispute? That Israel has done a few things since then with regard to stealing territory and imposing perpetual occupations?